Heretic Spellblade - Ch7

Chapter 7

A squad of knights guarded Alice’s bedroom, including a monogem Champion. Nathan paid no heed to the bedroom itself, however. The important part was the dark blue door on one wall. Bright, glowing runes covered it, and it lacked any doorknob or visible method of opening it.

When he approached, it slid open to reveal a white void. He and his Champions stepped through it.

Beyond lay Nathan’s mental world. Or, to be specific, one of the mental fortresses that he’d constructed using spatial and mental magic inside of his mind. According to the succubi who taught him how to use mental magic, the difference was important.

No, he still didn’t fully understand how he could enter his own mind or even bring others into it. But it worked, prevented others from scrying on him when he was here, and that was what mattered.

His mental fortress took on the form of the control room from his old world, by which point magical science had advanced far further in the face of utter annihilation. Banks of glowing terminals stood in rows along the walls and a massive monitor hung on the far wall, displaying an image of Soreaux.

Night had long since fallen and the holy city of light seemed eerily quiet. Torchlight took the place of the magical lamps that usually illuminated Soreaux.

Ignoring the image, he focused on the women standing around a central metallic console. A holographic map hovered between them displaying Champion movements and, presumably, invasions at various binding stones.

The first three women were as expected. Reine, his spymaster, wore a baggy robe that covered her curvy figure and wolf’s tail, but her eyes stood out. In place of irises, golden wings stared out at nothing. Reine had been the subject of Trafaumh’s experiments to create a new prophet, and while being physically blind, she possessed the ability to scry anywhere in the world.

Alice stood beside her, blonde hair streaming down the fancy black and red gown she’d worn to an afternoon outing with Nathan before this crisis. Worry gripped her blue eyes as she crossed her arms over her modest breasts, but she remained calm. An engagement ring glittered on one finger, reminding everyone of her imminent wedding with Nathan.

And then there was Seraph. Olive-skinned, lithe, busty, and utterly in command of the situation. Three gems resided in her chest—one sapphire and two jades. She glanced at Nathan as he entered but didn’t stop speaking to the others. The other two seemed less interested now that Nathan had arrived, unfortunately, so she sighed and stopped.

But Nathan had expected to find three women here, not four, and expressed as much. “Anna, I thought you’d be busy in Amica.”

“I am busy, but my archduchy isn’t the one that needs assistance, Nathan,” Anna said, placing one hand on a hip.

An engagement ring also glittered on her hand. Nathan had two fiancées, after all.

Archduchess Anna von Clair controlled or influenced roughly half of the Empire’s territory between her holdings and those of the Amican dukes she worked with. Despite her current power, she’d been an overlooked countess in the boonies when Nathan first met her. Her long dirty blonde hair hung in ringlets, but her face held a slightly more mature beauty due to being roughly Nathan’s age.

Not that he compared the two. They’d smother him in his sleep if he did. Although Alice probably would have had half the nobles in Aleich lined up to marry her if she’d worn more dresses before meeting Nathan.

“Even if the cascade hasn’t reached Amica in the east, word will,” Nathan said. “Panic will spread.”

“In the morning, maybe,” Anna said. “Right now, most nobles are going to sleep and those who have realized aren’t going to tell anyone. The best thing I can do is help manage the crisis in front of us. Especially as I’m the one who deals with the dark elves along the Houkeem Desert.”

“One thing at a time,” Seraph interrupted.

“Agreed,” Alice said.

Then she swept Nathan into a hug. The other women tried not to glare at her, although Nathan was smart enough to move around the table and share the affection.

Even if Waier hadn’t been the same risk as Artemis’s attack, he understood their reactions.

He also noticed the concerned looks they shot Ciana, even if they said nothing. His unicorn knight ignored everyone and stuck to his side. Her missing arm stuck out like a sore thumb, but she refused to let it bother her.

“Seraph, I can confirm Waier is safe,” Nathan explained after greetings. “The portal’s shut down and Otto is redirecting his forces to nearby portals. He’s also aware that Falmir has invaded Trafaumh.”

Seraph nodded and fiddled with the table. Before leaving, Nathan had adjusted the console so that it possessed the functionality it held in his old world. That enabled others to use it as a map or projector and even modify the display.

“What’s he doing about it?” Alice asked.

“Deploying his armies to the border.”

“That’s it?” Her face remained a mask.

“That’s what he asked me to pass on to you.”

She nodded, then relief crossed her face. “I’ll admit, I worried Otto might try something. We’ll still need to watch his soldiers, but if he understands that we’re not attacking Falmir yet, then he’s still trustworthy.”

A moment passed before Nathan understood the problem. “You thought he might attack Falmir immediately?”

“If Falmir takes control of western Trafaumh, that means Otto’s archduchy borders an enemy of the Empire. He’s just expended enormous financial reserves paying reparations after the civil war and paying soldiers to crush demons that spilled forth from Mortiswatch. While his political star is rising, he’s deeply vulnerable.”

“Offense is the best defense,” Seraph said. “If he lets Falmir entrench themselves, it will be his territory invaded next and he might not be able to stop them.”

“Could Falmir stop us if we attacked them first?” Kara asked.

Everyone looked at the dog beastkin, who winced, but stood her ground.

A few months ago, the idea that Kara might speak up during a discussion like this was patently absurd. Fei or Sen, maybe, as they knew where they stood with Nathan. But even if Kara had an opinion, she’d never voice it directly to those as powerful as Alice or Anna.

The change was her position. Kara was now one of Anna’s baroness’s, and one of the few beastkin nobles in the Empire. She likely spent a lot more time talking frankly with Anna about political matters these days.

“I said one thing at a time, but…” Seraph sighed. “Reine, what’s your assessment of Falmir’s forces?”

The monitor on the side shifted to displaying a growing encampment of Falmir’s soldiers. Despite the late hour, soldiers continued to pour in and they hadn’t finished erecting fortifications. They’d marched until late in order to start this invasion.

“Falmir’s army is significantly larger than the one they deployed at the Torruvium Fields a few months ago,” Reine said. “However, it consists primarily of levies and the private armies of nobles loyal to Princess Charlotte. Almost every Bastion remains in the south, near Castle Karlam.”

“That means they’re invading Trafaumh with only a handful of Bastions.” Nathan crossed his arms. “Even if they have a bunch of rebellious nobles on their side, that seems unwise. Almost every Bastion is a member of the Inquisition. They control the military, after all.”

“I believe that some Bastions may have changed sides.”

He cursed and ran a hand through his hair. “Which means Baudelaire’s control over the Inquisition is far from absolute. No wonder she didn’t just execute all the nobles when I thought she had the chance.”

Everyone shot him surprised looks, but he simply shrugged.

“Falmir’s military might isn’t the problem,” Alice said. “Although those numbers are large enough that Otto might pause, even if he’d have a trigem and they wouldn’t. It’s political. Trafaumh haven’t given us permission to enter their territory and we have no diplomatic agreement to aid them in case of invasion. We lack a casus belli to declare war on Falmir.”

“Charlotte teleported an army inside our territory during the Mortiswatch cascade,” Kara said.

“Yes, and then pulled back when we confronted her. There’s a standing agreement that nations can violate territorial sovereignty in order to suppress breaches, but that’s it. And there aren’t any breaches in Trafaumh.”

Yet.

“What’s Falmir’s casus belli?” Kara asked.

“That Trafaumh’s nobles have defected and called Falmir into their territory. Officially, they haven’t declared war even if it’s a blatant violation of Trafaumh’s sovereignty.” Alice’s expression tightened. “So they don’t have a casus belli.”

“Um, what’s a casus belli? It sounds like food,” Fei interrupted.

“A justification for war,” Maura said. “It’s some old Latin term.”

“They’re not speaking Latin, Sis,” Laura drawled.

Maura blinked, then shrugged. “Then whatever damn tongue it translates from.”

Nathan sighed. “They’re right, even if most of what they just said is nonsense. It’s an old faerie word, although it also has connotations with holy war to us. Almost every casus belli recorded in history is tied to the goddess. Supposedly the faeries had one when they wiped out whatever ancient race lived in the Soaring Peaks in Falmir.”

“Then Fyre can—” Kara began to say

“I will not proclaim holy war and send the Empire over the edge into outright zealotry,” Alice snapped, then recomposed herself. “I’m sorry, Kara, but this is a difficult discussion I’ve had with numerous members of the Diet’s Crusader faction. When we battle Falmir—and it is a matter of when, not if—it will almost certainly be in response to their aggression or due to an alliance with Trafaumh. There’ll be no going back otherwise.”

Kara nodded, her cheeks pink from the chastisement. Her tail drooped.

“It’s fine, Kara,” Anna quickly said. “It doesn’t hurt to ask these questions. I’ve had to. We don’t have Alice’s life growing up in the palace, Seraph’s decades in the shadows of Kurai and the Federation, or Nathan’s know-it-all-ism.”

“Hey,” he muttered.

Kara giggled.

The conversation shifted back to the state of the Empire. Seraph ran through the current status of the cascade and the Empire’s many binding stones under threat.

“Almost all our binding stones are under control.” She pointed at the green binding stones on the map. “Invasions have been quashed. Milgar is in a similar state. We haven’t heard from the Spires, but they haven’t triggered a cascade and no demons have been sighted nearby.”

“Astra’s gems are still active,” Nathan said. “Assume that Astra’s just busy fighting.”

“Or the invasion hasn’t struck yet. Several fortresses are still waiting. Is that normal?”

He nodded. “Cascades take anywhere from an hour to two days to cause an invasion. Usually smaller invasions take longer, but I get the impression that Messengers can intentionally delay their invasions.”

When he looked at the Twins, they nodded.

“You bet your well-muscled ass we can,” Laura said, looking at said body part.

“It’s annoying, though. Like trying to hold back an orgasm. Easy to let it slip out when you’re not ready, or fuck up and lose the wave entirely,” Maura said.

“That sounds like a you problem,” Sunstorm said.

“Oh, it definitely is. Amateurs fuck it up, but we decide when and how we invade.” She grinned. “That’s how we snuck in so early. Rode that cascade from the Spires before we should even have been allowed to invade.”

“Back to the matter at hand,” Seraph said, raising her voice.

Everyone looked back at her. Several binding stones on the map glowed red, drawing their attention.

“These are those still in danger?” he asked. Then frowned, as he saw amber stones. “Or are the yellow ones?”

“Yellow means it’s either being invaded or that we’ve reinforced it but are waiting for an invasion,” she said. “Red means we don’t know or believe it’s in danger.”

Nathan realized he controlled none of the red binding stones.

“Otto should have the resources to handle his binding stones, and they were distant enough that I don’t see any surprise Messenger invasions,” he said. “Kara told me something happened to one of Tharban’s stones.”

Seraph looked at Reine, who frowned.

“While I cannot see into the portals, I can see what happens in the fortresses. Panic spread through one shortly before demons broke out. While we secured Tharban’s binding stones behind wards due to his absence, it was only a matter of time before they reached it.”

“And?” He looked at Seraph.

“Vala had suppressed the invasion at Straub,” she said. “I had some foxes teleport her and the other Champions to stop them. We’ve been responding to other fires that way. Nurevia’s assisting Milgar’s Bastions the same way.”

The discussion over the safety of the Empire wrapped up in just a few more minutes, as Nathan confirmed the details of the remaining red dots.

“Based on what you’re saying, I don’t think I need to go back out there,” he summarized.

“No. The plan was to avoid relying on you or Astra. The two of you were fighting the only known Messenger invasions, after all. You might have been tied up all night.” Seraph tapped on the controls for the console and the map shifted north. “Besides, I knew that you’d be worried about something else.”

“Knew, huh?” He hid a smile.

Seraph didn’t. “Yes. You’ve been building defenses and preparing for something like this for years. But you worry about everything, and that means the thing you’re concerned about the most is what you can’t control. Trafaumh.”

She’d moved the map to cover the area of Trafaumh covered by the cascade. Every binding stone in the region glowed bright red.

“Have any of them—” he began to ask, looking at Reine.

“There are no confirmed breaches. The situation is the same as it was when you left for Waier. The Inquisition has responded to the cascade in force, likely using preplanned deployment orders. But all magical technology reliant on ambient magic has failed, including horseless carriages and elevators. This is delaying their response.”

“So nothing’s fallen yet,” he corrected.

Nods all around.

“The cascade is severe enough to have even disabled relay paper, so I have yet to receive any updates from my agents in the field,” Reine continued. “I am entirely reliant on my eyes. While I can see much, I cannot be everywhere, and I cannot easily surmise the mood.”

“But I can guess,” Seraph said.

“As can I,” Alice added, while Anna nodded. “At least for the nobles. Baudelaire has shut herself up in Soreaux’s citadel along with the clergy, beyond even Reine’s reach. Between the battle of prophets and a major cascade, the Inquisition’s rule is on a cliff’s edge and they know it.”

“The soldiers know this is a disaster as well,” Seraph said. “By now, the news about Mortiswatch has already spread far and wide. Only an idiot wouldn’t have noticed the increasing frequency of major cascades and invasions. Let alone the fact they coincided with the arrival of the prophets. Their zealotry means they believe they’re fighting off the apocalypse.”

Nathan resisted the urge to point out that they were, in fact, doing exactly that.

Somehow, the looks on everyone’s faces suggested they knew he was thinking it anyway.

“Well, if Lord Cynicism won’t say it, I will. They are fighting off the damn apocalypse,” Maura said. “I’m pretty sure armies of demons spewing forth from Hell is part of the definition.”

“Thank you,” he said drily.

His eyes scanned over the map of Trafaumh. He knew these fortresses and cities well. Better than the Empire’s even. Not a chance in Hell he’d let them burn a second time.

Yet he knew better than to run himself absolutely ragged. If he died while pushing himself, then that was it.

“If the Empire is safe and Trafaumh hasn’t collapsed, then I think this is the best we’re going to do for now,” he said, leaning back. “Unless a crisis breaks out, rotate out Champions as necessary.”

Seraph frowned, while everyone else nodded. Her expression tightened when she saw Fei, Sen, and Sunstorm sigh in relief at once. The map transformed back into the old that encompassed all of Doumahr, with multicolored dots all over it.

“I expected you to move on Trafaumh tonight,” Seraph said, her tone low and cautious.

“I considered it,” he admitted.

Her eyes met Fei’s, who grimaced and looked at Sen. The utter lack of brown hair combined with the utter exhaustion on her face gave away the problem.

“Something happened at Waier,” Seraph said. “Reine caught the end of something in Otto’s little throne room, but we missed the meat of it.”

Nathan briefly explained what had happened. Namely Bauer’s control over Tomoe and the agent that tried to assassinate Otto. He left out the cryptic behavior by Otto.

Most importantly, recalling the events reminded him that he needed to talk to Sen. He fixed her with a gentle gaze as she squirmed. Everyone else had realized her importance in the battle, especially after similar events with Artemis.

“Again, your magic was one of the only things that stopped an elite Messenger,” Nathan said. “Even I couldn’t help, unlike against Artemis.”

“We still need to talk about her,” Seraph said.

“I know.” A sigh escaped him. He’d avoided debriefing everyone about Artemis after the battle in favor of responding to the cascade. “Sen, what exactly is that magic you’re using? You used it against Thanatos as well.”

She bit her lip. “I think I need to talk about this with you in private. But I can tell you that it draws on Ifrit’s power directly.”

“Everything you do draws on Ifrit’s power.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t get it.”

“Um, he really doesn’t want me to talk about this with a wider audience.” Sen’s eyes locked onto the Twins, but she then scanned the room. “He trusts you. Nobody else. From what he’s told me, this is actually dangerous.”

Anger welled up in Nathan. Not at Sen, but Ifrit. He’d gotten her to begin casting spells that genuinely endangered her, and had done so without even talking to Nathan at all.

Then Nathan caught Sen’s gaze and, somehow, understood what she actually meant.

These spells weren’t dangerous to Sen. Or, at least, weren’t only dangerous to her. They were dangerous to Ifrit.

What in the name of Omria was she even casting?

“This is the third of these elite Messengers,” Alice said quietly, changing the topic. “You told me very little about the one that was truly behind the recent breach, but he’s been followed by two more. This doesn’t match your memories, does it?”

“We never pushed the demons hard enough to make them hit us this hard,” Nathan said.

“Seriously?” Anna asked incredulously. She waved a hand at the holographic map, the monitor, and the banks of glowing machines around them. “You had insane magical technology like this, right? Even without Reine. When I quelled the rebellion in Amica, it took weeks, and most of that was because of how much we struggled to understand what was going on. How could you do that much worse?”

The Twins guffawed, but Nathan ignored them.

Instead, his face hardened as he looked at the map. It was easy to imagine it transforming into the wasteland that his world had been left as, after demons and Messengers had torn through binding stone after binding stone.

“Nathan!” Anna shouted in shock, staring at the map. Everyone else did the same.

Oh. He hadn’t imagined it.

The map had shifted, showing what was left of his world by the end of it. Only Falmir still stood, as the rest of Doumahr turned dark. All of those multicolored dots in the Empire and Trafaumh vanished. Seraph stood stock still, paralyzed.

His Champions murmured as they soaked in the reality he’d lived. Ciana’s wide eyes belied the horror that hammered over the mental link.

“This is all that was left?” Seraph closed her eyes. “By the time you left?”

“Yes.” He tapped a finger against his old fortress, the Reaches’ Guard. “After the republicans overthrew the royal family, I was exiled up here. By that point, pretty much everyone else was dead. A couple of other trigems still existed in the hands of loyalist Bastions, but they lacked the experience I had. Falmir kept losing Bastions to Messenger breaches and eventually stopped risking their trigems.”

“There’s barely anything left,” Anna muttered. “Even Falmir lost territory. Didn’t they conquer the Empire?”

“Trafaumh and Falmir split the Empire between themselves after Siv’s invasion. But yes, over the course of years of Messenger breaches, it was all lost. After Trafaumh’s fall to Thanatos, a weaker Messenger took out Kaufberg, Mortiswatch, and the remainder of the western Empire’s former territory. We drew a defensive line along the Karlam river.”

Nathan ran a finger along a river that partially bordered the Empire and Falmir and led into Lake Unitas. A fortress glowed above the river, named Castle Karlam. Massive forces massed around it.

With a thought, he shifted back to the current map. Falmir’s armies remained in place at Castle Karlam, reminding him of how easily they could invade.

“Didn’t you hold Castle Karlam once?” Sen asked, frowning. “I feel that’s right.”

“It was my first binding stone. The border forts with the Empire were scarcely used before it fell, but my deployment there was intentional.” His eyes bore into his old home. “Oliver controls it now, along with the Reaches’ Guard.”

The Twins appeared behind him, pressing their tits against his back. Ciana grunted as they pushed against her and her glare suggested she might physically throw them aside in a moment.

“You know, it’s kind of a weird coincidence that the titty prophet likes this Oliver moron,” Laura said.

“Oh yeah, coincidence. Let’s go with that.” Maura giggled in his ear. “But, really, why is that cow-uddered slut so laser-focused on this world’s version of you? She’s even given him the same fortresses that you controlled.”

“Version?” Anna asked, utterly confused.

“Oliver is me,” Nathan grunted out. “Kind of. I don’t really get it, as I’m Nathan Straub—”

“Nathan von Straub,” Anna automatically corrected. She’d been doing that lately, as the addition of the “von” was new.

As if she hadn’t interrupted him, Nathan continued, “But Oliver Martel is effectively identical to Nathan Martel. The main difference, from what Vala’s explained, is that Oliver is less estranged from his father.”

A long pause.

“So, you get Tharban, and Oliver gets an actual father? Isn’t that a bit unfair?” Sen eventually said.

He laughed. “Unfair? Hardly. My old man is an asshole. A true noble, through and through. He’s not the monster that Tharban is, but ol’ Adam Martel is cut from the same political cloth. I can only imagine how he’s chafing at Charlotte’s rise to power.”

“Adam Martel…” Reine bit her lip and refused to look at him. Or maybe she was staring at him with her scrying, as he’d ensured the monitor display couldn’t show anything inside the mental fortress. “He is one of the few Bastions leading the advance into Trafaumh.”

“Of fucking course,” Nathan muttered, running a hand through his hair. “Along with who?”

“Oliver Martel and a Kate Harris. All three possess—”

“Duogems, yeah. I know Kate. She died defending the Gharrick Mountains. Never confirmed it, but I’m all but certain she’s my old man’s mistress. I thought they were at Castle Karlam.”

“They were. It is likely Charlotte mobilized them to the Reaches’ Guard at the last minute to hide her true intentions.”

Maybe. Nathan found that odd. Why not bring more Bastions with her in that case? What about the armies? She would have burned immense power teleporting so many soldiers to the border, given his father would have his own soldiers.

Adam Martel was an earl, which was roughly equivalent to a duke in the Empire and the highest rank of any noble unrelated to the royal family. He possessed an immense private army, which he used to both defend his own binding stones and further his political aims. Given he remained alive, those hadn’t included regicide in this world.

“Whatever the reason, we’re in luck. When we need to deal with Falmir, they only have Bastions in charge of duogems,” Nathan said.

“Correction, Gareth Pike has a trigem,” Reine said.

He stared at her. Then sighed. “Who? Erica?”

“Yes.” She tilted her head and he saw her robe move, suggesting her tail had wagged. “Why did you not guess Beth? I would assume a Bastion would prioritize the combatant who could keep them the safest, and they appear to be the closest.”

“Beth’s his first Champion, but he trigemmed Erica first,” he said. “At the time, he’d said that when you can’t even see your enemy’s heels in a race, it’s pointless to focus on endurance. It took me a while to realize he was talking about the power gap between us and the Messengers.”

Ciana winced as he spoke but recovered quickly.

Seraph narrowed her eyes. “A lot of your wisdom is Gareth’s, isn’t it?”

“He was a veteran of Kurai, and I was a dumb, arrogant moron who got lucky against Siv. The only smart thing I did for a long time was listen to him, even if I sometimes took months or years to understand his wisdom,” Nathan said.

“And this Oliver guy doesn’t even do that,” Maura chirped. “I wonder what happens when you blow your alternate version up?”

“Maybe ask the goat?” Laura suggested.

“Once we find out where Fyre is,” he said. “Reine?”

The wolfgirl shook her head. “I have utterly failed to find her since the duel. Given her power and how we know it can interfere with my vision, it is likely she does not wish to be found.”

With confirmation that Fyre didn’t appear to be returning, he pulsed her over the mental link he had with her. Several times. Maybe if she knew he was looking for her, she’d show herself.

Because he had a feeling that she might be wallowing in self-pity somewhere.

Oddly enough, the pulses terminated somewhere close. Almost as if Fyre was right on top of him. Puzzled, he tried to find her using mental magic but failed to make heads or tails of where she might be.

Nathan had been about to wrap up when he noticed an odd expression on Kara’s face. Although she stared at the glowing hologram in front of her, her expression remained distant. Staring at something she’d seen minutes ago.

Belatedly, he realized that he’d never explained his background to Kara. Horror rose within him.

“Shit, Kara, I’m sorry,” he blurted out, running a hand through his hair. “You must have no idea what I was talking about earlier. We’ll step aside for a minute again—”

Her expression returned to the present and she blinked a few times. She tilted her head to the side, expressing open confusion. Other Champions covered their mouths. He swore he heard laughter from them.

“Um, Kara?” he asked. “You did notice what we were discussing about Falmir and… everything earlier?”

“It was hard to miss, my lord,” she said, voice more sarcastic than it had ever been. “I was simply unaware of the precise scale of how terrible it had been. While I had gleaned that you came from some terrible future or knew what was going to happen, I didn’t realize you’d witnessed the almost complete destruction of Doumahr.”

“Gleaned…” Nathan grimaced, realizing why his Champions laughed at him. “I think I know why you and Fei are friends.”

“What?” Fei asked.

Even Kara narrowed her eyes, as if annoyed.

“Fei worked out that Nathan knew something about the future before he told us,” Sen explained. “Honestly, I thought he’d already told you given how you acted. You fooled us pretty well.”

“Such amazing operational security,” Seraph drawled, but her annoyed expression suggested punishments might be on the way for those Champions who had leaked Nathan’s past.

“Kara, who else knows?” he asked.

“Um, I didn’t tell anyone,” Kara mumbled, ears drooping and tail wagging slowly.

Quite a few, he guessed. Nathan sucked at keeping secrets then.

How many believed he was the true prophet, like Reine? Possibly too many. Kara’s adoration had no limits, even though he wasn’t sleeping with her.

“In any case, I think we’re done here. Narime needs to talk to me and I need to see her anyway,” he said. “Everyone needs to get some rest. Including you, Seraph.”

She shot him a wan smile. “Will you make sure I get it, Nathan?”

“Is that a request?”

A gulp. “Perhaps. I’m not sure I can just walk away in this sort of situation.”

“Then I’ll be back to force you away and let Kara take over.” He looked at the dog beastkin. “Kara, go sleep.”

“Of course, my lord.” Kara bounded off.

He filed out with almost all of his Champions. The Twins vanished somewhere between deciding to leave and actually leaving, as they likely retreated to their own mental fortress. With the amount of work they’d put in today, he felt a complete lack of surprise that they wanted to slack off.

Once back outside, he tracked Narime’s gems to her bedroom. The time had come to see what his one and only mystic fox Champion had finally decided to reveal to him.

- - - - -

Commentary: Given the intended release date, I'll need to post a little more frequently to get through everything. I'm trying to avoid doing a big dump later in September while still staying ahead enough that I can edit stuff if I don't like it without Patreon being too out of sync.

The "map transforms into the past version" part is from the original attempt. It got a good reaction, so I kept it.

This is one of those mandatory planning scenes that some people dislike. It also justifies why some actions can't be taken (e.g. attacking Falmir outright). I could trim this down, but that involves deleting some of the lighter moments (e.g. the Twins making comments) or risking people getting confused by some aspects that were only stated or hinted at (such as the cascade knocking out magical electricity).